Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Kotobukiya 1/400 Evangelion unit 02(beta)

Fist off, how does Kotobukiya calculates the 1/400 scale? even the guys who make the anime don´t know the exact size, they change it every scene, sometimes Evas are as tall as building, on the next scene they are twice the size, on the next, half the size of the same building, so, how do they calculated the scale of this kit?

This is the third kit I've builded from Kotobukiya and when you compare this kits with models from another brands like bandai or hasegawa, the first thing that comes to mind is the higher price, this kits are a little deceiving and, are they worth the money? well all depends on how you look at them, the Logicoma for example, it may seem expensive for a kit that size but the detail and articulations are amazing, also, the plastic used by Kotobukiya is super high quality.

Details on this kit are sharp, and eye popping, even the smallest detail is molded and sculpted with the greatest care.

Posability is OK, on the legs and head is amazing, on the torso is good, terrible on the arms.

Movement is not good on the arms, the shoulder armor gets in the way so the shoulders can only move up less than 90° on the model's normal arms, 0° on the mechanical left arm, even moving the arm forward and backwards will require popping off a little the left arm, on the normal arms the movement forward and backward is very limited by the shoulder armor, as I told before the shoulder guards get in the way and they don't have allot of movement, plus the little red price that holds the black guards is weak, and will stress and, or break, if you move it too much, the elbows bend only a little more than 90 degrees.

But we need to remind ourselves, this is not a toy, this is a model, and I have learned from Hasegawa that, on model kits, looks should outweigh movement and gimmicks, in that department this kit has suceded.

One of the many gimmicks of this kit is the entry plug, which I might say is off scale, too short comparing of what you see on the anime.

Bellow you can see how much you can bend the arm up, that's as much as you'll get thanks to the shoulder armor.

Also the kit comes packed with extra stuff you'll have 14 different hands to choose from, a HUGE improvement over the 6 hands Bandai packs with their kits (4 right hands and 2 useless left hands) the umbilical cord does not include an inner wire, so it's not posable, 4 progressive knifes, pallet gun and many other unless things like extra arm and extra head which I'll go back later.

This is the smallest kit of all, but, with better proportions and sharper detail is also the better looking.

Bellow yiu can see the 3.0 anime, the Kotobukia and Bandai heads, In my opinion this kit have better proportions than the Bandai model, the Kotobuliya's head looks more menacing, more "in scale" especially because of the wider jaw.

On the box you'll find enough pieces to make any version of the Eva 02 with the obvious exception of the Kai/Gamma version, yes, you can even make the series versions of it.

They included the extra arm, the extra head, the extra armor parts to make the older versions of unit 02, but they didn´t include enough policaps to do so, if you want to swap to those versions you'll have to disassemble the left arms just to get that policap out, the front of the chest also needs to be removed and swap some pieces, and the head.

I think this is a poor design decision, for many reasons, fist, the arms need to be disassembled for ONE policap... why they didn't include that ONE extra Policap goes beyond my comprehension, especially because Kotobukiya is famous for their tight fit, that makes any disassemble a risky operation. this is also true on the front chest piece, the fit is tight and if that wasn't enough it has to be assembled in a weird angle to fit correctly, this makes removing this piece almost impossible without breaking some of the pegs that hold it together.

But, aside of all this downs, this is without a doubt the best rendition of unit 02, it's just far from perfect.

Color separation on this kit is also very irregular, on some parts they'll make you put a small piece just to get the right look, an example of this is the shoulder detail.

But on some other bigger pieces you'll have to paint, like on the knee armor or the back of the shoulder armor, most of the mechanical arm needs paint, but the worst piece is the head, you'll end up painting most if it, most of the pieces of the head are molded in a light gray, which is not the right color for it, so you'll have to paint it in a German gray, metallic gray, black, red, metallic red, silver, clear green, clear orange and weird orange, (I used yellow instead) all that if you want to make the head look OK.

My last impresiones are: this is an up and down kit, and we have to keep reminding ourselves that this is a model kit, not a toy, movement is not top notch, but detail is, and on a model kit that far outweighs movement and gimmicks, posability is OK, my biggest problem here is the price, the big question, Does this Kit is worth the price Kotonukiya asks for? In my very personal opinion the answer is: NO.

Aside movement problems on the arms, and lack of correct color separation on the head and some other parts, the fact is this is meant to stay in one of the many versions you can build, but still, you'll pay for all that extra plastic, engineering, molding, extra space on the box, extra shipping because of that extra weight and space needed to make all those versions, and you'll be forced to stick with just one, so all that extra money, space and plastic, goes to waste, so even if this is the best looking unit 02, the kit is an overpriced tanks to some poor choices, so, unless you don't mind paying allot more for things and gimmicks you won't use, you shouldn't but this kit, a huge disappointment for me.

6.5 out of 10.

Also, I found this little stands, not great looking but they are cheap and well thought, they can store some parts inside, very versatile and they are perfect for small models just like this one, I'll make some modifications later and try to make it look like if the wire were the umblical cable, I'll post some pics if it works.